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Norwegian Government Expires Microsoft Contract

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the good-for-them dept.

Jeppe Salvesen writes "The Norwegian sites are bristling with the news, and hopefully this will leak worldwide. The Norwegian Government has dropped their contract with Microsoft. Microsoft had an exclusive deal with national and regional government. Administration Secretary Victor D. Norman states that 'we feel that our contract with Microsoft in reality has given Microsoft a monopoly in a field where competition would serve us better.'. My translation. The race is on."

7 of 354 comments (clear)

  1. This adds momentum by stevenbee · · Score: 5, Interesting
    It will be interesting to see if countries which have turned their backs on MSFT "solutions" will pool their knowledge of the alternatives.
    It would be cool to see a multinational "Knowledge Base" to be used by smaller countries wanting to go this route.

    Not as an anti-Microsoft movement, but as a pro-alternative movement.

    --
    Don't read this!
  2. New slogan by micje · · Score: 5, Funny
    Just Say .no
    --

    The nice thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from. - ast

  3. Translation by enigma971 · · Score: 5, Informative

    The article is translated at desktoplinux. http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS6576907451.html

  4. pooling knowlage by oliverthered · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Thats eexactly what the EU are planning to do...
    Hopefully they'll set up a 3rd world and common wealth inititive with there sharing.

    --
    thank God the internet isn't a human right.
  5. Re:So, what *UX flavors have good Norwegian suppor by Jobe_br · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Interesting how here on /., when discussing an alternative to MS, the first (and usually only) alternative to be discussed is Linux. As far as a desktop OS is concerned, Apple's Mac OS X may be far better suited to the task. Since the subsystem is very closely based on Open/FreeBSD and hence supports all the "information wants to be free" technologies that Linux does, the real comparison is the user interface.

    Now, I have a whole lot of respect for the GNOME and KDE efforts (I have Ximian on my laptop and KDE on one of my desktops), but they've got a ways to go to reach OS X's level of ease-of-use. I believe OS X is also localized in Norwegian, but I could be wrong on this count (if I am wrong, then that's a good reason to discount OS X :)).

    Apple's no longer *just* for creatives, designers, writers, etc. It is (at its core) a highly productive and functional operating system built on a highly stable and powerful subsystem. With OS X, you can *get things done*. For the novice computer user, OS X can be a good deal more intuitive than either Windows OR any of the Linux UIs.

    *sigh* ... this isn't a flame or a troll, just a commentary.

    Cheers.

  6. Re:The key is standards, not software by IamTheRealMike · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Nah, I'd use my new godlike powers to force MS to document the formats properly. There's nothing intrinisically wrong with the .doc format as far as I know, certainly forcing the use of ASCII or RTF (even xhtml) would be a step backwards in some respects. The problem isn't Microsoft technologies some of which are good, the problem is that people get locked in to them

  7. Re:against by lrichardson · · Score: 5, Interesting
    With you on that! A friend did ~300 PCs for a couple of hundred using Linux (RedHat), along with the servers. Compared to the $100,000 + doing it the M$ way would have cost.

    However, I think M$ has done one thing that is really starting to backfire in the corporate world ... intrusive software. XP, with it's online licensing was barely tolerable for most, and completely intolerable for some (you try connecting to the internet when in the Arctic doing geological work ... it involves sitting down and taking ~15 - 20 minutes to hook up the sattelite link, assuming you lugged the gear into the field. Heard similar horror stories from others who work in truly remote locations (Amazon, and huge parts of Africa). But now their software is coming with 'call into microsoft' features, which violate virtually every corporate security standard. In the security world, this is called a BACK DOOR and is something to be dreaded and/or blocked by anti-virus software. And now Microsoft is putting it in their products and claiming it as a feature?!?!

    At one place, we ran a little test using IP hijacking, with a server outside the corporate firewall. Win XP, Office XP, and the standard suite of apps ... and managed to hack the network in less than 20 minutes. Couldn't have done it without the PC automagically dialling out for 'updates'. Which, when you consider this company (which shall remain nameless) has assets over half a trillion, and the toughest security setup possible (under M$ products), is damn scary.

    We won't even get into the hassles people are running into when their software tells them it's expired, and to contact their nearest M$ rep ... especially when it hasn't.

    Sure, Word et. at are slick, but the cost of running them - in terms of money, security, and hassles - are pushing people to other OS.